Blog - Tag: wisdom

At various times I get the opportunity to speak to groups at the beginning at the school year. I often deliver some variation of the following—especially as it leads to a beautiful picture of what a wise, generous, and truly loving person looks like.

Christian education must be oriented to the Truth, as I argued in my previous post. Christ is the self-proclaimed Way, Truth, and Life. He is the Logos of John 1, the Wisdom of God, the Radiance of the Father's Glory, and the Only-Begotten Son of God.

The results of a new study in Australia highlight a perennial concern in education: significant education gaps in the classroom. The Australia study suggests gaps of 5-8 years in a single classroom, or, to put it in American terms, where students expected to do 7th grade math have not mastered 1st grade concepts. One of the study’s authors writes:

I recently re-read this article, written by Josh Gibbs in the winter of 2013. The title makes it seem like the article is about sports, but its particular point is about grades. The general point, however, has to do with the natural affections of the human hearts which have been entrusted to teachers in Christian classical schools to be shaped and molded into lovers of truth, beauty, and goodness: lovers of Christ.

The nature of a child and education come together, either to mar the child or to help the child flourish. When a child is not taught according to his or her nature, it is like cutting against the grain, dulling the knife and marring the wood. Yet when a child’s instruction aligns with his or her nature, the process is beautiful and the child thrives. Parents and teachers must understand the nature of a child so that their teaching can harmonize with that nature and cultivate him or her into a virtuous and flourishing adult.

Wisdom is a blindingly good word, but finding it in the Scriptures, we, like Plato’s cave-dwellers, shield our dark-deadened orbs in confusion and consternation. The sound of the word sometimes vexes our sensibilities or even leaves us cold. We do not know the reality behind the word, in the word, so neither are we warmed by it.

The Meno by Plato begins with the direct and forthright question, "Can virtue be taught?"

It ends with the conclusion, stated by Socrates, that it is a gift from the gods. Which, if he is right, is a wise thing to say. And if he just spent a whole dialogue guiding Meno to that conclusion, then he has just led him along the path to wisdom.

Not that Meno has arrived (or that Socrates thought he had), but that he has progressed. He has, if he has a willing soul, moved in the direction of becoming wiser.

The highest high point of classical education was its beginning. There never has been and never will be a poet as perfect as Homer. All of the Greeks acknowledged that he was their teacher. All of them walked down trails he blazed. Nobody compares but Moses and Christ.

The harder the reformers try, the worse they make the American school. Why can’t they get it right? Their errors are so fundamental that only a complete rebooting will help.

Conventional education is based on three principles and one application. 1. There is no truth 2. If there is Truth, you can' t know it 3. If you could know Truth, you couldn't communicate it. 4. Therefore, there is no point teaching children how to seek truth and wisdom, only power.

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